I'm a young American woman in Milan...and you're not. I go to La Scala a lot...and you don't.

Joan Sutherland

October 14, 2010

With the recent passing of Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, the memorials from former colleagues and friends have been encompassing. The Italian media responded with obituaries in all three of their major newspapers (samples below). For the Wall Street Journal, super-action hero (and sometimes opera scholar), Philip Gossett who has shaped some of the worlds most t(h)rilling bel canto divas past and present also added to the remembrance.

Archivist Evangeline Galettis displayed (above) little Joan from a 1934 school photograph, along with vintage vinyl and other memorabilia.

And a few pieces from the Italian media, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica (La Stampa's is here):

October 11, 2010

"Her death haunts me: I remember that Lucia in Covent Garden, 1959: Maestro Tullio Serafin personally hired me to direct that production and I admit when I first saw her I worried, I thought that we had a problem. I imagined Lucia as an otherworldy presence, a small woman. But Serafin said: 'never mind, just wait and listen to her voice'. She sang 'Sempre libera' and I found her astonishing. A miracle of virtuoso technique, precision, intonation, and breath control. We went together to Italy where the following year she sang Alcina in Venice and drove the audience crazy with joy -- that opera allowed her to show her talent... It was a triumph... She was a very nice woman and a cultured musician. Sutherland and Callas are without a doubt the greatest singers of the twentieth century. Sutherland the unique voice, Callas the voice and the temperament. Two marvelous forces to be reckoned with".

At first, he really didn't like her upon seeing her for the first time:

"Indeed, I was truly disappointed in her looks -- she was a grenadier in drag. Everything played against her: her imposing physique, her height, the Australia accent. The polar opposite of Maria, who was so refined. But what a voice! I called Maria Callas, and asked to come and see a rehearsal. Maria, like a true professional, came and after the rehearsal hugged me. She was very sweet to Sutherland as well, giving her good career advice. I was just lucky, because I found myself sandwiched between two great artists like a slice of ham! Sutherland taught me so much, the importance of the voice in opera. I am truly saddened. She will be part of opera's history, just like Pavarotti"

Soprano Daniela Dessì had the good fortune to receive advice from Sutherland herself and told ADN-Kronos agency:

The purity and balance of the emission, the flexibility of the instrument, the beauty of the timbre and the breath control that made the wildest fiorettature sound so apparently effortless -- Sutherland had everything to become the greatest coloratura singer of the 20th Century. She even turned her limitations -- the downright bad diction that not even her most ardent fans can seriously defend -- into her trademark.

Her talent was so astonishing that she made you forget everything else -- she's the anti-realist soprano, there's no opera as musical theater in her universe (no wonder she thought modern stagings were ridiculously beside the point). Sutherland is there, tall and gawky and who cares if she's double the size of the tenor unless the tenor is Pavarotti, she's soaring above that, bending sound to her will, creating extraordinary music that, if you listen close enough, will reveal you secrets -- it's the stuff the Sirens were supposed to do, "tell you everything that is going to happen over the whole world", according to Homer (via Butler).

Not to mention, the favorite pastime of some opera lovers, taxidermy, is ill-fitted to explain her work and her life. Thanks to an extraordinary husband -- a much better musicologist and vocal coach than a conductor, but, another of her wonders, she makes his limitations in the pit beside the point -- Sutherland made opera travel in time, bringing the past back to glorious life. She and Bonynge revived a repertory that was considered inferior simply for the lack of the right voice to bring it back to us -- they went back in time and gave a most conservative opera world an actual revolution. Her range and versatility always beat the odds, laughed at the nay-sayers (just consider her mid-career Turandot), taught us that it's pointless to look back at Malibran and Pasta and all the other great dead singers who might or might not have sounded the way we've been taught they did.

Sutherland makes nostalgia look silly -- there's no repertory that's too hard to bring back to life, if you have the talent. She makes us hope that someone else -- with the right voice and, maybe, the right mentor -- will come after her, to surprise us, to show us once again how it's done, here and now. Her work -- and Bonynge's -- remains so fresh because it's so open to new possibilities.

But then, Joan Sutherland made everything look effortless -- the very definition of genius.

May 25, 2007

Dame Joan Sutherland, accompanied by her husband Mr. Joan Sutherland, the conductor and musicologist (a much better musicologist than a conductor, by the way), has just visited Bologna where she has been awarded the «Siòla d'oro», the opera prize given to outstanding singers and named after the great soprano Lina Pagliughi, born exactly 100 years ago (she passed away in 1980).

Our dear sweet "Big Luciano", still ailing from his fight against a terrible illness, could not obviously participate but sent a video. Where, still pale and haggard after the treatments, bravely downplayed his health problems with a smiling "these days I'm not very well, non sto tanto bene", joked about his partnership with the Dame "we were a golden couple, golden in every sense", and explained how Sutherland and her hubby Richard Bonynge, "Joan and Ricky", "will be forever in my heart: and I still think about all the fun we had together, since our very first tour together, in Australia. Brava Joan, bravissima: all the world knows how much your talent deserves this award. And if I may add something, you set a standard of professional behavior and dedication to your work".

Cue the Thunderous applause.

Sutherland, always cool, explained that "nowadays I don't do much, I am an old lady", but hasn't lost her gift for the cutting remark.

Her favorite performances? "Norma and Esclarmonde".

Does she listen to her records? "Not when I was still singing. Now, I do, occasionally. And I ask myself: how did I manage to hit that acuto?"

Why, if she admires Rossini so, did she only sing in Semiramide? "Unfortunately a singer's willingness to do an opera has to be accompanied by a opera house's proposal to sing in that opera".

Why doesn't she give masterclasses? "I'm 80, I don't wanto to have anything to do with opera anymore. I only work occasionally as a judge in singing contests".

What about young singers then? "Young singers do not have the appropriate technique".

She doesn't go to the opera much: "In my days, every cast had at least three or four excellent voices. Nowadays, you're lucky to hear one. And anyway in today's opera houses they have too many microphones and too many absurd directors".